Who Isn't Delusional?

I've been thinking out a blog post about delusions.  The title has been up as a draft for a while.  My basic premise here was something like:

Lots of so called progressives believe Trump supporters are delusional because they believe the election was stolen, despite all the evidence, despite the 60 plus court cases decided against Trump's claim, in many cases by conservative judges, even Trump appointees.  (And I agree that the stolen election story is fabricated and those who believe it are deluding themselves.)

But then, I was going to go on and argue that everyone - of all political persuasions - believe in their own delusions.  To some degree, most Americans have believed to some extent the following untruths.  

"Freedom and Justice for All"  - even though there was slavery, then Jim Crow, and then  continuing economic and justice systems that create obstacles for people of color and women that make achieving "The American Dream" much more difficult than it is for white males.  (Not impossible, but more difficult.)  This is fine as an aspiration, but it's a delusion when it's used to cover the gross inequities due to racist and sexist policies and administration of those policies.

The US gives billions of dollars in aid to help poor people around the world - when in reality helping humanity is the last of the three key goals of these programs.  According to, a 2019 Congressional Research Service report   they key objectives are National Security, Commercial Interests, and the Humanitarian.  

"Commercial Interests. Foreign assistance has long been defended as a way to either promote U.S. exports by creating new customers for U.S. products or by improving the global economic environment in which U.S. companies compete."

Often the Humanitarian goals are linked to supporting the commercial interests.  It's how the budgets get passed in Congress - appealing to the benefits to a member's district and/or funders. So, in essence, while we proclaim that we are being humanitarian by helping the world, that humanitarian aid tends to help the US economy by requiring all the aid items - from food to weapons - to be grown or made in the US.  Such aid can also undercut the farmers or businesses of the country getting the aid. And that aid is often used to prop up dictators in countries we have an economic interest in and also to be a soft bribe for support of the US in international bodies - like the UN. 

I have a personal relationship with . . . my god - people with different religions - even different variations of the same religion - believe in different creation stories, different beliefs about what happens after death, about women and LGBTQ folks, and have varying ideas about the role of their gods in daily life.    Some people believe their religious teachings literally and others metaphorically.  But many people of different beliefs, believe fervently that their beliefs are the only true ones.  

What's good for General Motors is good for the US - that capitalism is what makes us a great country, when in fact unbridled capitalism, that doesn't deal with the inherent flaws of capitalism such as monopolies and externalities, doesn't benefit the US or the world.  Instead it leads to the worship of money to the detriment of all other values.  Even people who understand this, look the other way as they continue to order boxes from Amazon even as that system destroys the natural world to extract resources and creates punishing work conditions for many of its employees and seeks to monopolize the market itself..  The need for continuing growth leads to destroying the ocean through destructive fishing technologies and plastic wastes, to bulldozing forests for wood, destroying not only the trees, but the habitats of millions of species of plants and animals. We have to go to the moon and Mars to find rare minerals to keep our phones and other electronics working. And this system disrupts indigenous cultures around the world in the need to turn people into consumers.

We should all recycle - While recycling has benefits, the way we do it raises real questions.  From, The Walrus:

The limitations of a market-driven system mean that, once industrial- and commercial-waste streams are factored in, about two-thirds of Canadian waste still ends up in landfills.

It helps us feel better about the waste we produce: according to one estimate, 850 kilograms of garbage, per capita, every year.

And so as these delusions are revealed, we come to the next delusion. 

"There's nothing I can do about it" - even though we spout maxims like "You can do anything you set your mind to" we also ignore issues like Climate Change or police killings of blacks because "there's nothing I can do about it."  Although we say we live in a democracy and that gives us freedoms to change things for the better, it's so much easier to be distracted by our consumer toys - from snow machines to hover boards to video games and Netflix movies - than to actually take the responsibility to do the work that keeping a democracy functioning as a democracy.  

Basically, we've all absorbed -from our parents, religious leaders, schools, and the various means of mass communications - a lot of delusions about how our country and the world work.  And the more we personally benefit from something the better we are at ignoring the inconvenient truths that poke holes in our beliefs.  We see the good in something when it suits our values forgetting how it also harms us.  So liberals look on with smug satisfaction,  as law enforcement uses facial recognition technology to find and arrest Trump supporters who joined the insurrection   But they forget that they protested the use of these very same technologies when they were used against Black Lives Matter protesters.  

While some of this was written, I hadn't really pulled it all together yet.  

And then this morning on NPR,  Shankar Vedantam was talking about his new book - Useful Delusions.  The interview covers a lot of what I've been thinking about, but adds the idea that delusions can be useful.  

I've considered this too, but I think there's a difference between the wonder of watching a magic trick, yet knowing it's an illusion, and actually believing it the woman was cut in half and then put back together.   I have no problem with those who find one of many competing religions helpful because they give hope, if they understand their religion isn't necessarily the one true faith AND if they don't use their religion's beliefs to limit the freedoms of other people.  

Shankar talks about people who were scammed online by a man pretending to be a woman but defended that man because his love letters brought them hope and joy.  I'm guessing many of these people, deep down, understood this was a fantasy relationship.  But what about the others who gave this online lover money they couldn't afford to give and whose lives were hurt badly in the end?

In any case you can read the interview highlights here, or listen to the whole interview below.